Get up earlier, Germans tell Greeks

[HeresyLives]

Dear prime minister,

If you're reading this, you've entered a country different from yours. You're in Germany.
Here, people work until they are 67 and there is no 14th-month salary for civil servants. Here, nobody needs to pay a €1,000 bribe to get a hospital bed in time.

Our petrol stations have cash registers, taxi drivers give receipts and farmers don't swindle EU subsidies with millions of non-existent olive trees.

Germany also has high debts but we can settle them. That's because we get up early and work all day.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/05/bild-open-letter-greece-papandreou

[DJ13]

1. This aint going to end well

Not your post, I mean the EU in general.

[HeresyLives]

17. Well, they shape up or they ship out.

The real question is how many other countries are in the same boat.

[AllentownJake]

22. What a loose confederation of independent states sharing the same currency?

Yes, that generally doesn't end well.

[CTyankee]

27. The florin worked for a while in the 15th century....

[AllentownJake]

28. Yes and that was made from Gold

Wasn't exactly a Fiat Currency.

[CTyankee]

39. True, at the same time that the florin was "coin" of many realms, the poor

in Florence had to make do with "piccioli," silver that was constantly being devalued as more base metal was added to it...another example of the rich fixing the plight of the poor while keeping the florin their own currency. Amazing how nothing seems to change, just the tactics...

[wuushew]

2. Greece should just gut its military

€8.62 billion a year would go a long way to pay down debt.

[Lasher]

4. Sounds like a good policy to live by.

I can think of another country that needs the same advice.

[Ken Burch]

14. Most other countries, actually.

But, yeah, I know the one you mean...

[Lasher]

18. We are communicating effectively.

[HeresyLives]

16. Yeah they have twice the military and police force they need.

40% of Greece works for the state.

[AllentownJake]

25. It is always wise for a government to cut its Military during times

of civil strife.

Do you wish to seethe guillotines at Parliament for them?

The last thing you do as a government when the shit is hitting the fan is cut your police force or internal military personnel.

[wuushew]

34. How does a navy or airforce assist crowd control?

It doesn't, it just eats money, fuel and parts. Who are Greece's enemies? It is surrounded by fellow NATO allies on all sides and would seem to have a good relationship with former enemy Turkey.

[AllentownJake]

35. I'm sure you want to add trained Military personnell

Into the rioting crowds?

[HeresyLives]

38. Should have done so long ago

is what I said.

But sooner or later, given the cutbacks, they'll have to go too.

[rockymountaindem]

3. Perhaps a decent reply would be: "Hey Germany, remember that time you occupied us for four years?

Those were great times. NOT!"







I guess that would be going too far, since the unwritten rule of the EU is "nobody talks about WWII", but that editorial is CRASS.

[HeresyLives]

10. Greece already tried that. It didn't work.

[rockymountaindem]

11. When? n/t

[HeresyLives]

13. Few days ago.

A minister in Greece hollered about the money that Germany took out of the country during WWII, and claimed that was the base of the problem. It isn't, but the Greeks tried the guilt-trip already.

[AllentownJake]

23. Germans really don't do guilt well

Unless your are talking about the Holocaust.

[HeresyLives]

30. Germans offered to buy Corfu in return.

Which didn't go down well in Greece.

They've all been yelling at each other the last week or so, taunts included

[AllentownJake]

33. Good thing neither has missile technology nt.

[Quantess]

5. I bet they work all day, on the days they work.

Isn't Germany the country of several week vacations? (like 6 or 8 weeks per year)

I promise, I am not taking sides, because I don't know enough about the situation. But, I just thought I'd mention Germany's enviable vacation benefits, since somebody mentioned "working all day".

[HeresyLives]

12. Much of Europe vacations for August.

[Quantess]

19. If that passes for an intelligent reply, then skoal!

:toast:

[villager]

6. "Hey Greece, we make our trains run on time!"

n/t

[Ken Burch]

9. Actually, that was Mussolini with the railroad thing, but you're not far wrong.

Bild would probably like to see the Bundeswehr trash Salonika again.

[Ken Burch]

7. The current Greek government shouldn't be blamed for this

The right-wing government that preceeded it hid the level of government indebtedness, with the collaboration of Goldman Sacks. The newly-elected PASOK(social democratic)government is being vilified by Bild, a far-right German newspaper that has spent most of its existence attacking the trade union movement and student activists.

It was created AFTER the war, but from the tone of the article, we can guess who Bild would likely have backed if it had existed during the 1933 German elections.

[HeresyLives]

15. Yes, it was the previous Greek govt that did it.

[Canuckistanian]

8. Yes, Germany, we get it

You're an orderly society. You work hard. You're fiscally responsible.

But you're not exactly a paragon of financial rectitude yourself.

Worst Financial Crisis since 1931?
German State-Owned Banks on Verge of Collapse
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,536635,00.html

[JVS]

20. Germans work? Only if you count 8 weeks of vacationing as a job.

[HeresyLives]

31. If they can afford it, what's wrong with that?

[JVS]

36. It's globally uncompetitive

[HeresyLives]

37. They are competing globally.

And doing very well.

[Alias Dictus Tyrant]

41. They make up for it in productivity.

Germany is the only significant country in Europe that still does R&D and real engineering on any scale. On a per capita basis, it is on par with the US in that regard. They still have some concept of how to run a modern business.

So few countries have solid fundamentals that they, like the US, can blow some of their lead on frivolous activities, vacation, and other non-productive expenditures and still come out ahead.

[stray cat]

21. I guess Greece expects people to pay for them and bail them out just like America

[AllentownJake]

24. Italy, Spain, Portugual and Ireland are hoping this last longer

because the speculative side show moves to their shores the minute this Greek crisis is resolved and from what I'm reading, the Goldman shit in Greece is minor compared to what the Italian financiers did.

[HeresyLives]

29. Yeah, Italy is likely to be far worse.

And no one will have any sympathy for them either.

[AllentownJake]

32. They learned it from the Brittish, French, Germans and Americans

Believe me, this economic aids, as I like to call it, is coming home, sooner rather than later.

[Lothrop]

26. No Thanks Germany

Get into the salt mines and be a happy slave?

^^^^^^^^^^^^

The Work Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism

During the medieval period, the feudal system became the dominant economic structure in Europe. This was a social, economic, and political system under which landowners provided governance and protection to those who lived and worked on their property. Centralization of government, the growth of trade, and the establishment of economically powerful towns, during the fifteenth century, provided alternative choices for subsistence, and the feudal system died out (Webster Encyclopedia, 1985). One of the factors that made the feudal system work was the predominant religious belief that it was sinful for people to seek work other than within the God ordained occupations fathers passed on to their sons. With the Protestant Reformation, and the spread of a theology which ordained the divine dignity of all occupations as well as the right of choosing one's work, the underpinnings of an emerging capitalist economic system were established.

Anthony (1977) described the significance of an ideology advocating regular systematic work as essential to the transformation from the feudal system to the modern society. In the emerging capitalist system, work was good. It satisfied the economic interests of an increasing number of small businessmen and it became a social duty--a norm. Hard work brought respect and contributed to the social order and well being of the community. The dignity with which society viewed work brought dignity for workers as well, and contempt for those who were idle or lazy.

The Protestant ethic, which gave "moral sanction to profit making through hard work, organization, and rational calculation" (Yankelovich, 1981, p. 247), spread throughout Europe and to America through the Protestant sects. In particular, the English Puritans, the French Huguenots, and the Swiss and Dutch Reformed subscribed to Calvinist theology that was especially conducive to productivity and capital growth (Lipset, 1990). As time passed, attitudes and beliefs which supported hard work became secularized, and were woven into the norms of Western culture (Lipset, 1990; Rodgers, 1978; Rose, 1985; Super, 1982). Weber (1904, 1905) especially emphasized the popular writings of Benjamin Franklin as an example of how, by the eighteenth century, diligence in work, scrupulous use of time, and deferment of pleasure had become a part of the popular philosophy of work in the Western world.

^^^^^^^^^^

http://www.coe.uga.edu/~rhill/workethic/hist.htm



You'd think the Germans would avoid this attitude at all costs. The sentiment in the OP is more of the pull yourself up by the bootstraps garbage that eliminates thought as to who has the boots.

[Ken Burch]

40. In the 20th Century, the world would've been better off if the Germans had slept in.

...Just sayin'...

[kenny blankenship]

42. +6,000,000